Slideshare uses cookies to improve functionality and performance, and to provide you with relevant advertising. If you continue browsing the site, you agree to the use of cookies on this website. See our User Agreement and Privacy Policy.

Slideshare uses cookies to improve functionality and performance, and to provide you with relevant advertising. If you continue browsing the site, you agree to the use of cookies on this website. See our Privacy Policy and User Agreement for details.

The Donner Party: A True Horror Story of Murder, Mayhem and Cannibalism

The story of how this happened-- a free eBook on all platforms. From leaving Missouri to their fate in the Sierra Nevadas. What were the choices and mistakes the party made? What can we learn from them?

Cockpit Resource Management (CRM) was begun in 1979 as a result of a NASA workshop. One of the key elements was to make sure that co-pilots would be more responsive to warning/advising the pilot. In the case of Air France Flight 447, they didn’t even get to that stage, with two co-pilots, both of whom tried to control the plane. Instead of working together, they actually worked against each other.The situation got worse when the Captain entered the cockpit, with neither co-pilot filling him in on the sequence of events and vital readings which might have allowed the Captain to quickly assess the situation.

One minute 38 seconds

There’s a common image of a red and white sign for Area 51 you can find

There’s a common image of a red and white sign for Area 51 you can find

The Donner Party: A True Horror Story of Murder, Mayhem and Cannibalism

1.
“I wish I could cry, but I cannot. If I
could forget the tragedy, perhaps I
would know how to cry again.” Mary
Graces. Survivor, the Donner Party.

2.
The Rule of Seven:
Every catastrophe has 7 events.
Six Cascade Events leading to the
final event, the Catastrophe. At
least one of the Cascade Events
involves human error. Thus most
catastrophes can be avoided.

3.
In Spring 1846, a group of emigrants departed
west for California. Rather than take the usual
route, they decided to take a ‘shorter’ new route,
the Hastings Cutoff. The delays from taking that
route caused them to reach the last obstacle, the
Sierra Nevada Mountains, so late in the season
that they became trapped by heavy snowfall, and
were forced to spend the winter. Starving and
freezing, some of the group resorted to
cannibalism. Eventually, about half the party was
rescued in the Spring of 1847.

4.
1846:
12 May: Set out from Independence, MO.
27 June: Fort Laramie. They are urged not to take the Hastings
Cutoff.
18 July: The party crosses the Continental Divide.
19 July: At the Little Sandy River the party splits and the Donner
Party heads toward Fort Bridger, while the rest stay on the known
California Trail.
31 July: Leave Fort Bridger to take the Hastings Cutoff. They cross
the Wasatch Mountains of Utah, with many delays.
30 August: Set off across the Great Salt Lake Desert, experiencing
more delays
26 September: Finally rejoin the California Trail at the Humboldt
River.
7 October: An elderly man is abandoned by the convoy, left on the
side of the trail to die.

5.
13 October: One man decides to cache his wagon; the two men who stay
behind to help him, come back without him, saying he was killed by
Indians. He was murdered by them.
25 October: A small relief party arrives from California with 7 mules of
provisions; accompanied by two Native American guides.
November: The party cannot make it over Truckee Pass and camp for
the winter.
15 December: The first member of the party dies from malnutrition.
16 December: The strongest members of the party set out on snowshoes
to make it through the pass to Sutters Fort (the Forlorn Hope).
21 December: The snowshoers have made it over the pass but are
battling deep snow. One member sits down, smokes his pipe, and tells
them to go on. He dies.
24 December: The snowshoers can go no further. They draw lots to
decide who to kill and eat. But can’t kill the loser. Members begin to
die.
26 December: They resort to cannibalism.

6.
30 December: The snowshoers run out of deceased human meat. It’s
suggested they kill the two Native Americans who were part of the
resupply party. Warned, the two run off.
1847
9 January: The snowshoers come upon the two weakened and
exhausted Native Americans who’d tried to escape. Shoot the two
and then eat them.
17 January: The snowshoers are taken in by a Native American
village. For the rest of the party on the other side of the mountains,
it’s uncertain when they resorted to cannibalism of those who died
from malnutrition and/or the cold.
19 February: The First Relief makes it over the mountains.
29 April: The last surviving member of the Donner Party arrives at
Sutter’s Fort.

7.
The Mexican War.
Technically speaking, the Donner Party was
emigrating to Mexico, not another part of the United
States. And they were doing so in the midst of a war
between the United States and Mexico.
An explorer named Fremont started a revolt in
California in early 1846, in the spirit of the Texas War
of Independence.
This meant assistance would not be available when
needed.

8.
Lesson: Larger events have to be factored
in; emigrating in the midst of a war is one of
them.

9.
Choosing to follow an unknown, untried path. Also known
as trying to take a short cut.
There were two main routes west at the time of the Donner
Party: the Oregon Trail, which was used starting in the 1830s
and the California Trail which was brought into service in
1841. In 1842, Lansford Hastings wrote a book titled The
Emigrant’s Guide To Oregon and California. In it, he briefly
mentioned a new path to the west, which Hastings claimed was
shorter and faster. Technically, on the map, it is. There was
one big problem with the Hastings Cutoff. Hastings had never
traveled it until 1846, the year the Donners attempted it. One
of the early leaders in the Donner Party, James Reed, read
Hastings’ book and noted the mention of the cutoff. They
decided to take it in order to save time and beat other
emigrants to California.

10.
LESSON: We all know about shortcuts, especially
untried ones. The Donner Party bet their lives on a
single sentence in a book written by a man they
didn’t know, who wrote about the cutoff when he
hadn’t even tried it.

11.
Inability to make sound decisions on their own.
After Fort Laramie, there was still time for the group before they had
to make a decision but fate, in the form of Hastings, intervened.
Hastings had been giving letters to riders heading east to hand to
emigrants en route. He warned of opposition to emigration by
Mexican authorities in California, advising them to travel in large
groups. He also claimed to have worked out a new and better route
and would be waiting at Fort Bridger to guide parties west.
The kicker was that Fort Bridger was off the known path to California
so a decision would have to be made soon.
The Donner Party received one of these letters on the 12th of July.
On The 20th of July, they reached the Little Sandy River in Wyoming
and it was time to make a decision. To continue on the main trail or to
break off to the southwest toward Fort Bridger.
They made the decision to trust Hastings’ letter and route and turned
off for Fort Bridger.

12.
LESSON: Between a known and an unknown, the reasons
to risk one’s life to an unknown must be compelling and
trusted.
Despite personal warnings, the party made the decision to
trust a man they’d never met.

13.
A Lack of Clear Leadership.
Splitting from the others after this decision was made,
leadership was passed, by consensus, from Reed to Donner.
Reed was former military and older, but his style irritated
many in the group. Donner, on the other hand, was easier to
get along with. Thus he was elected.
From here on, a major problem for the group was a lack of
decisiveness in terms of decision-making. Decisions were
often put to a vote, which works all right in peacetime, but in
crisis can often be fatal.

14.
LESSON: Instead of Donner making a decision whether to press
forward after having lost much time, the group took a vote. In
tough situations, democracy is usually not the best course of action
(Lewis & Clark took a vote now and then, but they had an entirely
different group than the Donner Party).
They elected to follow the new trail.

15.
Crossing the Wasatch, the Great Salt Lake Desert and Pilots
Peak.
Getting through the Wasatch Range slowed them down
considerably. (I spent two months in that range during Winter
Warfare training and can attest to the difficulty of the terrain.)
Then they hit the the Great Salt Lake desert. In 1986 a group in 4-
wheel drive vehicles couldn’t cross the same path the Donners
attempted. The Donners lost more time having to stop at Pilots
Peak for water and rest. By the time they got across the desert and
rejoined the California Trail, they were now the last party on the
trail. A fight broke out between two members and one killed the
other and was banished. He was also the most forceful and
experienced man in the party.
Despite knowing how late in the year it was, the Donner Party
pressed on.

16.
Lesson: An unwillingness to accept the reality of the
situation, even when time was running out. There comes a
time when one has to accept sunk cost– a past cost that has
already been incurred and cannot be recovered.

17.
The moment of crisis, also known as the Tipping Point.
There is often a key moment in cascade events, both large and small, where
something happens that indicates future cascade events will be negative,
leading to an inevitable final event. Usually, this cascade event involves a
no-do-over event.
The tipping point for the Donner Party came on 7 October 1846. As they
moved toward the Sierra Nevada’s along the Humboldt River, with worn
out animals, everyone who could, had to get off the wagons and walk. One
of the men owning a wagon forced an elderly man, Hardkoop, who had
been traveling with him, out of his wagon. Hardkoop tried walking on
severely swollen feet. Unable to keep up, he limped along, pleading with
every wagon for someone to take him in.
No one did.
Hardkoop sat down under a large bush, pleading still.
They left him behind.
This meant the Donner party had no leader and was no longer a group. It
was everyone for themselves. And that led to what would happen in the
Sierra Nevada Mountains.

18.
LESSON: Recognizing tipping points is key, and often the last chance to
avoid a catastrophe.
One has to have the ability to make the hard decision.
Throughout the journey, one gets the feeling the Donner Party was on an
inexorable path to disaster. Yet, there were numerous points where a decision
could have changed someone’s fate. Whether it be to not take the Hastings
Cutoff; to turn back in Utah when Hastings told them to wait; to let go of their
extraneous possessions and make the best possible time in order to make it
across the desert and through the Sierra Nevadas.
The inability to make these earlier decisions led those in the party to make
decisions (homicide, cannibalism) that they had never contemplated.
While the weather lowered the final boom on the Donner Party, this
catastrophe shows human error clearly playing a part.

19.
Starvations, freezing, homicide, and cannibalism.
One thousand feet from the summit of Truckee Pass, while they
were camped, it began to snow. The next day when they tried to
press forward, they couldn’t make it over the pass in snow five feet
deep.
In November the party decided to camp for the winter, even though
they didn’t have sufficient supplies to make it through. Their hope
was that a rescue party would come from Sutters Fort. The Mexican
War probably seemed very far away to them, but most of the men
who would have formed a rescue party were away fighting.
Many of those in the Donner Party went beyond what most people
are capable of in order to survive, but they’d sealed their fate way
back in Wyoming with the decision to take the Hastings Cutoff and
then kept it sealed with decision after decision up to this point.
One by one they begin to die.
And one by one they were eaten by the others.

20.
1. Have a Special Ops preparation mindset
2. Focus by utilizing both big picture & detail thinkers
3. Conduct Special Forces Area Studies
4. Use the Special Forces CARVER formula
5. Have a “10th man”
6. Conduct After Action Reviews
7. Write and USE Standing Operating Procedures (SOPs)

22.
Are you interested in a presentation about various catastrophes and
how the cascade events could have been prevented?
Events covered range from human-machine interface, to leadership,
to communication, cost-cutting, engineering, group think,
perseverance, systematic failure, and more?
Catastrophes are cascade events culminating in disastrous chaos.
War is chaos. Special Forces is the most elite unit trained for a variety
of combat situations.
What makes Special Forces elite is our mindset and preparation.
Are you interested in a presentation on how to use Special Forces
tactics, techniques and mental attitude to help your organization
anticipate and prevent potential catastrophes?
Please email bob@bobmayer.com

23.
Print
Book
More free slideshares on survival, writing, history,
trivia and more topics are available by clicking on
the image below.

24.
Bob Mayer is a NY Times Bestselling author, graduate of West Point, former Green
Beret (including commanding an A-Team) and the feeder of two Yellow Labs, most
famously Cool Gus. He’s had over 70 books published including the #1 series Area 51,
Atlantis and The Green Berets. Born in the Bronx, having traveled the world (usually
not tourist spots), he now lives peacefully with his wife, and said labs.
Bob has presented for over a thousand organizations both in the United States and
internationally, including keynote presentations, all day workshops, and multi-day
seminars. He has taught organizations ranging from Maui Writers to San Diego State
University, to the University of Georgia, to the Romance Writers of America National
Convention, to Boston SWAT, the CIA, the Royal Danish Navy Frogman Corps, Fortune
500 companies, IT Teams in Silicon Valley, National Guard units, Ohio State University
Nursing Program, Army Reserves, and many others. He has done interviews/consulted
for the Wall Street Journal, NY Times front page, Forbes, Sports Illustrated, PBS, NPR,
the Discovery Channel, the SyFy channel and local cable shows.
www.bobmayer.com
www.CoolGus.com

25.
The book on the left is how you prepare NOW.
The book on the right, is your guide to surviving an
emergency or catastrophe given you’ve prepared.
The handbook in the center is a discounted, distilled
version of both books with the most important basics
- click on cover for any.
Print
Book